Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Friendship Outs: Giant Gift Of Marin Watercolors Goes To…

Not a museum in Maine, where he painted for much of his last 40 years. Not a museum in New York, the center of the U.S. art world, or in Los Angeles, the west coast hub. Or New Jersey, Marin’s birthplace.

Tree, Stonington, Deer IsleNo, Norma B. Marin, the artist’s daughter-in-law, recently donated nearly 300 watercolors, drawings and sketchbooks to the Arkansas Arts Center in Little Rock, according to the Kennebec Journal.

…Norma Marin’s gift to the Arkansas Arts Center was neither random nor the result of a falling out with Maine’s cultural institutions, as some speculated when the gift was announced. Instead, it was the result of a cultivated friendship between Norma Marin and the Little Rock museum and based on the expertise of the center’s staff, past and present.

The curator who will interpret this gift studied Marin as part of her dissertation, and previous museum directors built the museum’s reputation on artworks done on paper. The Marin gift also helps satisfy Norma Marin’s goal of expanding her father-in-law’s artistic impact beyond Maine, where his stature is secure and where hundreds of his oil paintings, watercolors and drawings have permanent homes in museums statewide.

To put this in context: “…Colby College Museum of Art…holds [Maine’s] largest collection of Marin artwork, with more than 60 images.” And, “Combined, museums in Maine have more than 100 Marin paintings, drawings and prints in their collections…the University of Maine Museum of Art in Bangor has 26, the Portland Museum of Art has 13, Bowdoin has seven, and the Ogunquit Museum of American Art has two. His paintings are also part of many private collections in the state.”

So the gift is a big one.

There’s a lesson here, too, in specialization — something I’ve championed for museums. As the KJ explained:

In the 1970s, [Arkansas Arts Center] director Townsend D. Wolfe recognized that building the museum’s reputation through a strong collection of works on paper was a more affordable strategy than collecting oil paintings. He secured a purchase grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Among the first purchases were works by Andrew Wyeth and Willem de Kooning, vastly different painters but both among the best known in their genres in the last half of the 20th century….

[Now] The Arkansas Arts Center has more than 5,000 drawings in its collection, dating to the Renaissance and including works by 19th century American and European masters. The bulk of the collection is from 20th and 21st century artists…

Strength can attract more strength.

Photo Credit: Tree, Stonington, Deer Isle, Courtesy Arkansas Arts Center Foundation Collection via the Kennebec Journal

Kids And Museums: A Few Words

DenverPlay2I like kids, and I like to see kids in museums. But maybe with a few boundaries.

A feature article that appeared in recent days in several places — here it is in the Chicago Tribune, headlined Taking the Kids — and exploring an art museum in a new way — reminded me of an exchange of views I had on this just over a year ago with Christoph Heinrich, director of the Denver Art Museum.

I visited the museum last January, and at times it seemed that children were everywhere, but that they could have been anywhere. In other words, many were just playing — they may have been coloring, but some were just horsing around or talking, in ways unrelated to what was in the galleries. I took a couple of pictures: one, top left, of kids in Denverplaythe El Anatsui exhibition, and right below, of kids in the museum’s Spanish Colonial galleries.

My question is, if they could have been anywhere, wouldn’t all museum-goers benefit if they didn’t have to step around the kids to see art? (Some were more rambunctious in that El Anatsui show than my picture suggests.)

I know that will get some people angry, and I raised the issue with Heinrich. He made two very valid points. One, I was visiting during what was still Christmas break from school, and the museum (well, parts of it) was very crowded that day, with more children than usual.

What’s more, Heinrich said, Denver is a family town, and the museum must cater to families.

I agree. That’s why I liked reading the above-mentioned article, which talks about the museum’s “Backpacks and Art Tubes,” the former “full with artmaking, games, and puzzles” and the later for those that are “Short on time.”

As the article put it:

…You can Live Like a Chinese Scholar in one exhibit or create an American Indian horse mask in another. Become a detective, as you make your way through the furniture gallery.

Did I mention these backpacks are yours to borrow during your visit? That they’re designed for different age groups, including preschoolers? If you are short on time, the kids can grab an Art Tube with one simple activity, like decorating special eyeglasses to enhance your viewing pleasure. This might explain why on weekends and during school breaks one in four visitors to this museum are kids. And, given Denver’s large Hispanic population, every activity is bilingual.

You’ll also find hands-on family activities throughout the museum. For younger kids, there is a dress-up area where they can try on Chinese robes and make their own paper robe….

DenverPaintStudioThe writer, Eileen Ogintz, continues with more  and adds a little about what’s going on at a few other museums, too. All of the activities are about art and art-making, not just playing. And in Denver, the backpacks and art tubes are just two of the many available “Kids & Families” activities and programs.

At the time I was there, the Denver museum also had a Paint Studio, designated for experimenting with paint, adjacent to a contemporary art exhibit, as I recall. It’s at right.

So let me repeat — lest I be misinterpreted — I want to see children in museums as much as anyone. But I do think there are boundaries, and I applaud the museums, like Denver, that are working hard to make the link with art and artmaking clear, even if they are not always successful.

Photo Credits: © Judith H. Dobrzynski  

Where I Was A Few Weeks Ago

1620972_829991537026967_1318460368_nAnyone who writes travel articles can tell you that they usually take months to go from computer to publication — for lots of reasons including seasonality. So I rarely post my occasional travel piece here — not to mention the fact that this blog is about art and culture.

But tomorrow’s New York Times travel section publishes an article on the cruise I took in Mid-February to Senegal and the Gambia, so why not post it? It’s in print with the headline Through An African Artery and online with the headline Crocodiles and Culture on a Cruise in West Africa. The pictures are different, too, and the online version even has one of me petting a crocodile.

WassuThe trip didn’t involve seeing any art. But we did visit cultural sites, including Kunte Kinteh island (at left), which the late author Alex Haley made famous in “Roots” as a place his ancestor Kunta Kinte passed through. And much further inland, we visited the Wassu Stone Circles (at right), megalithic structures that date to 750 to 1000 AD and are believed to be burial grounds of chiefs. Modern-day excavations turned up only a few grave artifacts there – a few bracelets, spears and other weapons, usually made of iron or bronze, and some pottery shards. But it, along with three other similar sites in that part of Africa, is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

So have a look.

Photo Credits: © Judith H. Dobrzynski 

 

Picasso Museum: Reopening With What?

“It beggars belief that some urgent “conservation” necessity should have struck all of these modern works at the same time….”

Picasso museum in Paris prepares for reopeningThat’s Michael Daley, the conservation watchdog, opining on the reopening of the Picasso Museum in Paris, which is set for June. When it does readmit the public to the building — an operation of “restoration, renovation and extension” that began in 2009 and “was far more extensive than the preceding work in terms of both objectives and cost — it will be completely restructured (pictured at right), raised to new standards of safety and security. It started out costing €30 million and ended up costing some €52 million. More details about the makeover are here.

But as Daley, Director of ArtWatch UK, recently pointed out in a letter to The Guardian: 

What comes as a truly horrible surprise is that all of Picasso’s 5,000 works have been “cleaned, restored and reframed” for the opening. It beggars belief that some urgent “conservation” necessity should have struck all of these modern works at the same time. We can only conclude that Picasso’s art has been cosmetically spruced-up to match the new decor. The consequence is that all of these works have been severed at the same historical moment and to the same prevailing taste from their previous and likely varying states of conservation or non-conservation.

I’m not an alarmist about conservation — some episodes of which, however, unquestionably go wrong — but Daley has a point here. I, too, find it hard to believe that all 5,000 works needed, well, work — despite the fact that many have been touring the world to raise money for the renovation project. According to The Guardian, the tours were “helping to raise €31m to partly finance the work” while “[t]he French government has paid €19m.”

If there is damage, it has been done, but Daley is right to raise the question.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of The Guardian

 

Randolph College’s Maier Museum Is Punished

winter-facade_website-sizeToday, more than a month after Randolph College announced the sale of its beautiful painting, Men of the Docks, by George Bellows, to raise money for its endowment, the Association of Art Museum Directors slapped the Maier Museum there (shown at left) with sanctions — “a more stringent step than censure,” a step it had already take, AAMD said, adding:

The sanctions will include instructions to our members to suspend any loans of works of art to and any collaboration on exhibitions and programs with the Maier Museum of Art.

The group also “urges the College to stop this practice, which not only erodes the credibility and good standing of the Maier Museum, but also affects all art museums and the trust that the public has placed in them.”

I oppose the sale as well, but am pleased at least that the painting is going to the National Gallery in London, where it will be seen by many.

The AAMD statement noted two significant occurrences.

When the Randolph College’s plan to deaccession and sell works from the collection of the Maier Museum to support the operations of the College became public in 2007, AAMD contacted the College leadership in the hope that AAMD could offer assistance in investigating alternatives to address these challenges. Unfortunately, the College continued on this path and in 2008 sold Rufino Tamayo’s painting Trovador. As a result, AAMD censured the Maier Museum of Art to signal its objection to this action and to endeavor to discourage the College from selling works from its collection for this purpose in the future.

And:

Following the sale of George Bellows’ Men of the Docks in February 2014, AAMD once again reached out to Randolph College to encourage the College to find other solutions to its need to secure additional resources for its operations. Unfortunately, the College did not express any willingness to cease its deaccessioning plans, but rather simply restated its rationale for doing so.

While I find it hard to conjecture what AAMD could have done for Randolph, the intention was good.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Maier Museum